Technical considerations on using the large Nancay radio telescope for SETI

The Nancay decimetric Radio Telescope (NRT) in Nancay, France, is described, and its potential use for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) observations is discussed. The conclusion reached is that the NRT is well suited for SETI observations because of its large collecting area, its large sky coverage, and its wideband frequency capability. However, a number of improvements are necessary in order to take full advantage of the system in carrying out an efficient SETI program. In particular, system sensitivity should be increased. This can be achieved through a series of improvements to the system, including lowering the ground pickup noise through the use of ground reflectors and more efficient feed design, and by using low-noise amplifier front ends

Chronic Early-life Stress in Rat Pups Alters Basal Corticosterone, Intestinal Permeability, and Fecal Microbiota at Weaning: Influence of Sex.

Background/aimsWistar rat dams exposed to limited nesting stress (LNS) from post-natal days (PND) 2 to 10 display erratic maternal behavior, and their pups show delayed maturation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and impaired epithelial barrier at PND10 and a visceral hypersensitivity at adulthood. Little is known about the impact of early life stress on the offspring before adulthood and the influence of sex. We investigated whether male and female rats previously exposed to LNS displays at weaning altered corticosterone, intestinal permeability, and microbiota.MethodsWistar rat dams and litters were maintained from PND2 to 10 with limited nesting/bedding materials and thereafter reverted to normal housing up to weaning (PND21). Control litters had normal housing. At weaning, we monitored body weight, corticosterone plasma levels (enzyme immunoassay), in vivo intestinal to colon permeability (fluorescein isothiocyanate-dextran 4 kDa) and fecal microbiota (DNA extraction and amplification of the V4 region of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene).ResultsAt weaning, LNS pups had hypercorticosteronemia and enhanced intestinal permeability with females > males while body weights were similar. LNS decreased fecal microbial diversity and induced a distinct composition characterized by increased abundance of Gram positive cocci and reduction of fiber-degrading, butyrate-producing, and mucus-resident microbes.ConclusionsThese data indicate that chronic exposure to LNS during the first week post-natally has sustained effects monitored at weaning including hypercorticosteronemia, a leaky gut, and dysbiosis. These alterations may impact on the susceptibility to develop visceral hypersensitivity in adult rats and have relevance to the development of irritable bowel syndrome in childhood

Frédéric Nepveu (1777-1862) : personnalité d’un architecte dans l’ombre du château de Versailles

Chef d’orchestre des immenses travaux ayant transformé le château de Versailles en musée historique sous la monarchie de Juillet, l’architecte Frédéric Nepveu (1777-1862) restait jusqu’à récemment mal connu. Seules quelques-unes de ses réalisations versaillaises dans les ailes du Midi et du Nord avaient fait l’objet d’études ponctuelles – où l’analyse iconographique prenait souvent le pas sur celle de l’architecture –, depuis la publication de Thomas Gaehtgens sur la galerie des Batailles en 1984. Issu d’un mémoire de recherche sur Frédéric Nepveu et ses travaux dans le corps central de Versailles, cet article donne une vision globale de sa carrière. La formation de l’architecte, ses premiers projets et travaux sont ainsi éclairés, de même que ses ouvrages ayant précédé la transformation du palais de Versailles. Car il effectua d’importantes restaurations dans deux autres édifices : le château de Neauphle-le-Vieux (Yvelines) et celui de Maintenon (Eure-et-Loir). Ce regard nouveau posé sur l’œuvre de Frédéric Nepveu permet de mieux connaître sa personnalité et les références qui le guidèrent au cours de sa carrière. Sous un angle sociologique, l’attention portée sur son entourage familial, ses relations avec le milieu artistique, ou encore son cadre quotidien, complète les données précédentes et participe à cette meilleure compréhension de son travail.Director of the huge works which converted the palace of Versailles into an historical museum under the July Monarchy, the architect Frederic Nepveu (1777-1862) was not well known until recently. Only some of his works in the South and the North wings of the palace of Versailles were studied – largely in books more concerned with iconographical analysis than architecture – since the Thomas Gaehtgens’ publication about the Gallery of Battles (1984). Sprung from a dissertation about Frederic Nepveu and his works in the central body of Versailles, this article gives an overall view of his career. His training, his first projects and works as well as those he has done before the alteration of Versailles are enlightened. For he made important restorations in two other buildings: the castle of Neauphle-le-Vieux (Yvelines) and the one of Maintenon (Eure-et-Loir). This new outlook on the work of Frederic Nepveu enables to know his personality better and the references which guided him during his career. From a sociological point of view, the attention drawn to his family circle, his relationships with the artistic world and his daily environment completes the previous information and contributes to a better understanding of his work.Der Architekt Frederic Nepveu (1777-1862), Chef der umfangreichen Umbauarbeiten, die unter der Julimonarchie das Schloss Versailles in ein historisches Nationalmuseum umstellten, war bis vor kurzem sehr wenig bekannt. Die einzigen Studien seit dem 1984 Beitrag Thomas Gaehtgens über die Galerie des batailles ( Saal der Schlachten) bezogen sich ausschliesslich auf Nepveus Werk an dem Süd- und Nordflügel des Schlosses Versailles und stellten sich eher auf ikonographischem als auf architektonischem Standpunkt. Die Studie, die sich auf eine Diplomarbeit über Fréderic Nepveu und dessen Beitrag an dem zentralen Corps de Logis des Schlosses stützt, bietet auch einen Gesamteinblick in die Karriere des Architekten : seine Ausbildung, seine ersten Entwürfe und Arbeiten vor dem Umbau des Versailler Schlosses, beziehungsweise die Führung der Restaurierung der Schlösser Neauphle-le-Vieux (Yvelines) und Maintenon (Eure-et-Loir). Dadurch werden Nepveus Werk, seine Persönlichkeit ebensowie die Leitlinien, die seine Karriere regiert haben, in ein anderes Licht gerückt /gestellt. Die neugesammelten Unterlagen über seine Familienumgebung, seine Beziehungen mit dem künstlerischen Kreis, oder sein alltägliches Leben bieten einen soziologischen Hintergrund und tragen zu einem besseren Verständnis der Arbeit Nepveus bei

L'Eroticos de Plutarque et les romans d’amour : échos et écarts

In his philosophical dialogues, Plutarque confers a considerable place to the narrative: not only he makes of it an exemplary illustration of the philosophical thought (in Eroticos, the fiction of loving adventure is in accordance with the theoretical developments on love and marriage) but he crosses also the narrative texture with the theoretical developments, the dialogue being contemporary of the related events and partially aroused by them. The love story of the Eroticos has the same structure as the beginning of the contemporary love novels, and also presents numerous echos with them concerning the definition of the actantial roles of the characters; his main character is a passionate, excessive and paradoxical woman just like the heroines of Chariton and Xenophon of Ephesus, but to such an extent that it knocks down the conventional stereotypes of the novel because she is the erastes of the couple, and so an adequate exemplum in the genre of philosophical dialogue about love.Dans ses dialogues philosophiques, Plutarque confère au récit une place considérable : non seulement il en fait une illustration exemplaire de la pensée philosophique (dans l'Eroticos, la fiction d'aventure amoureuse est en harmonie avec les développements théoriques sur l'amour et le mariage) mais il entrecroise la trame narrative avec les développements théoriques, le dialogue étant contemporain des événements racontés et en partie suscité par eux. La fable amoureuse de l'Eroticos a la même structure que les débuts de romans d'amour contemporains, et présente aussi de nombreux échos avec eux dans la définition des rôles actantiels des personnages ; son principal personnage est une femme passionnée, excessive et paradoxale à l'égal des héroïnes de Chariton et de Xénophon d’Éphèse, mais au point même de renverser les stéréotypes conventionnels du roman en ce qu'elle est l’éraste du couple, et de ce fait un exemplum adéquat dans le genre du dialogue philosophique sur l'amour

A Computational Comparison of Optimization Methods for the Golomb Ruler Problem

The Golomb ruler problem is defined as follows: Given a positive integer n, locate n marks on a ruler such that the distance between any two distinct pair of marks are different from each other and the total length of the ruler is minimized. The Golomb ruler problem has applications in information theory, astronomy and communications, and it can be seen as a challenge for combinatorial optimization algorithms. Although constructing high quality rulers is well-studied, proving optimality is a far more challenging task. In this paper, we provide a computational comparison of different optimization paradigms, each using a different model (linear integer, constraint programming and quadratic integer) to certify that a given Golomb ruler is optimal. We propose several enhancements to improve the computational performance of each method by exploring bound tightening, valid inequalities, cutting planes and branching strategies. We conclude that a certain quadratic integer programming model solved through a Benders decomposition and strengthened by two types of valid inequalities performs the best in terms of solution time for small-sized Golomb ruler problem instances. On the other hand, a constraint programming model improved by range reduction and a particular branching strategy could have more potential to solve larger size instances due to its promising parallelization features

L'enseignement des langues anciennes dans huit des pays entrés dans la communauté européenne en 2004

Voici les résultats d'une enquête que nous avons menée sur les pays entrés dans la communauté européenne en mai 2004. Notre but a été de chercher des renseignements sur la place du latin et du grec ancien dans l'enseignement du second degré et sur la formation des maîtres, sur l'organisation des études en langues anciennes à l'université et leur niveau, sur les effectifs d'étudiants et les débouchés. Nous avons d'abord fait un inventaire des universités où l'on enseigne les langues anciennes ..

Portable Flux Tower Deployments Field Campaign Report

Contents Acronyms and Abbreviations...................................................................... iii 1.0 Summary ....................................................... 1 2.0 Results ........................................... 1 3.0 Publications and References ................................................. 2 4.0 Lessons Learned ....................................................................

Philomèle : Du mythe aitiologique au début du mythe littéraire

Térée, Procné et Philomèle : du mythe aitiologique au  début du mythe littéraireLes variantes et les gloses du mythe dans les textes grecs sont autant d’indices pour montrer qu’il a pour fondement une fable animalière : l’interaction de trois oiseaux aux noms étymologiquement signifiants (Procné, la « tachetée », est un rossignol, Philomèle, « l’amie des troupeaux », une hirondelle, Térée, le « guetteur », une huppe plus anciennement à la fois épervier et coucou), dont le comportement animal, attentivement observé, a été interprété sur le modèle des relations sociales et subjectives entre êtres humains et dans le cadre d’homologies entre le cri de chaque oiseau et un mot du langage humain. L’interaction familiale et passionnelle l’a ensuite emporté sur la composante animalière, créant l’état grec du mythe où les personnages ne sont plus animaux que lors de leur métamorphose finale. Puis, en terre italienne, c’est l’observation d’hirondelles et de rossignols d’autres espèces qui a conduit aux échanges, bien connus mais déconcertants, de noms et de rôles des deux femmes. Le mythe y a gagné une plasticité qui a permis aux poètes latins de le remodéliser de multiples façons, selon la facette morale ou esthétique qu’ils souhaitaient mettre en valeur.Tereus, Procne and Philomele : from the aitiological myth to the beginning of the literary mythVariants and glosses of this myth in Greek texts are clues indicating that it is based upon an ancient fable about animals : the interaction of three birds whose names have a significant etymology (Procne, “speckled”, is a sort of nightingale, Philomele, “friend of flock”, is a sort of swallow, Tereus, “watchman”, is a hoopoe that was, in elder time, both a hawk and a cuckoo) and whose animal behavior, carefully observed, has been interpreted on the pattern of social and subjective relations between men and with homologies between the cry of each bird and a word of human language. Next, the familial and impassioned interaction has prevailed over the animal component, creating the situation of the Greek myth in which the heroes are birds only when they are metamorphosed. Then, on Italian land, it was through the observation of other sorts of nightingales and swallows that people were led to exchange names and parts of the two sisters. The myth has then gained a plasticity that allowed Latin poets to modify it in many ways, according to the moral or aesthetic facet they wanted to emphasize

Image reconstruction in optical interferometry: Benchmarking the regularization

With the advent of infrared long-baseline interferometers with more than two telescopes, both the size and the completeness of interferometric data sets have significantly increased, allowing images based on models with no a priori assumptions to be reconstructed. Our main objective is to analyze the multiple parameters of the image reconstruction process with particular attention to the regularization term and the study of their behavior in different situations. The secondary goal is to derive practical rules for the users. Using the Multi-aperture image Reconstruction Algorithm (MiRA), we performed multiple systematic tests, analyzing 11 regularization terms commonly used. The tests are made on different astrophysical objects, different (u,v) plane coverages and several signal-to-noise ratios to determine the minimal configuration needed to reconstruct an image. We establish a methodology and we introduce the mean-square errors (MSE) to discuss the results. From the ~24000 simulations performed for the benchmarking of image reconstruction with MiRA, we are able to classify the different regularizations in the context of the observations. We find typical values of the regularization weight. A minimal (u,v) coverage is required to reconstruct an acceptable image, whereas no limits are found for the studied values of the signal-to-noise ratio. We also show that super-resolution can be achieved with increasing performance with the (u,v) coverage filling. Using image reconstruction with a sufficient (u,v) coverage is shown to be reliable. The choice of the main parameters of the reconstruction is tightly constrained. We recommend that efforts to develop interferometric infrastructures should first concentrate on the number of telescopes to combine, and secondly on improving the accuracy and sensitivity of the arrays.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures; accepted in A&

Extending nanoscale patterning with multipolar surface plasmon resonances.

Plasmonic excitation of metallic nanoparticles can trigger chemical reactions at the nanoscale. Such optical effects can also be employed to selectively and locally graft photopolymer layers at the nanostructure surface, and, when combined with a surface functionalization agent, new pathways can be explored to modify the surface of a plasmonic nanoparticle. Among these approaches, diazonium salt chemistry is seen as an attractive strategy due to the high photoinduced reactivity of these salts. In this work, we demonstrate that it is possible to trigger the site-selective grafting of aryl films derived from diazonium salts on distinct nano-localized area of single gold nanotriangles, by taking advantage of their multipolar localized surface plasmon modes. It is shown the aryl film will preferentially graft in areas where the electric field enhancement is maximum, independently of the considered excited surface plasmon mode. These experimental findings are in very good qualitative agreement with the calculations of the local electric field, using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. We believe that this plasmonic-based approach will not only pave a new way for the spatially controlled surface functionalization of plasmonic nanoparticles, but also provide a general strategy to attach distinct molecules to hot spot regions on a single nanoparticle, opening promising prospects in sensing and multiplexing, and optically nano-scale patterning of functional groups